Assessing the resilience of natural and anthropogenic vegetation to droughts in Argentina through remote sensing data

Background Human-induced climate change has increased climate system instability, making droughts more frequent and intense. Vegetation response to drought is commonly assessed through the lens of ecosystem resilience, quantified by resistance and recovery. This study addresses the lack of long-term, high-resolution assessments of ecosystem resilience to drought and dry events at a country-level scale. Using remote sensing data, we evaluated the spatiotemporal dynamics of vegetation productivity across diverse natural and anthropogenic vegetation covers in Argentina, using the Enhanced Vegetation Index as a proxy. We then quantified vegetation response to droughts during the 2001–2024 period by applying ecosystem resilience measurements. Results Dominant stable natural and anthropogenic vegetation represent 75.5% and 11% of the national land cover, respectively. While all these classes are sensitive to water deficits, the anthropogenic covers exhibited notably more variable resistance and a more variable recovery than their natural counterparts. Among natural classes, Shrubs and herbaceous cover exhibited the highest drought resistance, while Grasslands and Flooded grasslands manifested the lowest resistance, highest variability, and shortest recovery. Conversely, among anthropogenic classes, Temporary crops and Pastures recorded the lowest resistance and longer recovery. Natural cover drought resistance exhibited a similar distribution of drought intensities across classes, whereas anthropogenic covers showed a more dissimilar distribution, manifesting larger variations in EVI drops as drought intensity increased. In contrast to drought resistance, resistance during dry events was less variable across all covers, with consistently higher EVI values that occasionally reached positive levels—particularly for Flooded grasslands. Respecting recovery time, anthropogenic classes generally required longer periods; Forest plantations and the majority of Temporary crops lagged behind natural covers, with Temporary crops taking an average of three additional bi-weeks to recover compared to Grasslands. Natural woody ecosystems exhibited the highest resistance and variable recovery. Spatial distribution of resistances and recoveries showed no clear pattern. Conclusions This research demonstrates that, as climate instability increases, maintaining the structural complexity of natural vegetation is a critical requirement to avoid irreversible losses of key ecological processes and sustain the provision of the ecosystem services.